Subscribe to Blog ContentA colleague told me about an all hand's company meeting he attended at his company. As expected, employees got an earful of all the cutbacks. These included fewer paid personal days, no more free soda, and adding several more hours to the work week. Oh, and they let go of some employees. How can management expect the employees not to feel angry by such changes?
Maybe not in my colleague's case, but you can do a little legwork to help prevent too much employee discord. It's almost impossible to completely avoid dissension. Instead, soften the blow by involving employees.
One executive told her employees she wanted to avoid layoffs. Rather than going off and listing cutbacks, she asked them for suggestions. Her employees offered to help with the company's yard work, switched the letterhead from color to black, and worked an extra hour or two each week to cover their favorite treats.
The following lists some of the ideas I've heard or read about in helping cut expenses:
- Adding scales: Use scales for measuring liquids instead of relying on guesstimates. This leads to less waste and making products last longer.
- Baking at home: If you want to continue providing treats for employees or customers, do the cooking at home. After all, homemade adds a touch.
- Cut photocopy and printing use: Do printers print a cover page to help employees sort through what's theirs? So it'll be a little confusing, but you can save a bit without printing cover pages. Employees can learn to get up to go to the printer as soon as the print something. Do they need to print it, in the first place? For example, meeting agendas -- encourage employees to carry agendas in their handheld devices or have one person review the agenda up front and say, "Next item on the agenda is..."
- Changing car plans: One company looked at the cost of car rentals vs. reimbursing employees for using their personal cars.
- Cut travel: Many tools make it possible to meet online and for a much lower rate than airfare, hotel rates and car rental.
- Review conferences and tradeshows: Are they paying off? Do you get enough sales from the show to cover the cost of attending? It's cheaper to retain customers than get new ones. Maybe you should move this budget on customer retention.
- Taking on new business: Some companies are turning away new business because they don't have the funds to cover the business. This doesn't have to be the case if you explore financing options beyond banks. Many non-traditional lenders have more flexibility than banks.
- Cut shipping rates: You may not need overnight mail or can rely on a different service. Instead of mailing invoices, what about setting up online invoicing?
- Cut weekly or monthly events: Does the team go out to lunch every week? Change it to once a month. Hey, they might appreciate not having a big meal -- seriously.
How can you involve your employees to brainstorm ways to lower expenses?
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